Last week, fellow beadmaker,
Jill Symons (who makes such gorgeous beads) and I had lunch and visited a local art gallery,
The Signature Shop.
This gallery has jewelry, wood, ceramics, fiber, glass and other mediums. Well, as two artists viewing other artists' work, you can be sure we didn't just look at every piece and only say, "that's nice."
What was interesting to me, was the way each of us looked at the pieces. Of course now it's a "I should have known it" moment. Jill pointed out that she and I would look at the same item and get something totally different out of it.
I chose two gorgeous functional ceramic pieces from
The Artful Home's website to use as examples of what we would have done. The top
black and white Viking bowl I would see as- "Can I make this shape?" and start thinking about forming it on the mandrel, which tools would I need, etc. Jill would first see it as the combination of patterns, the contrast in colors, etc.
And again for the
Petal Teapot, she would look at the patterns, colors and I would look at the shape first and mentally figure out how I would attempt to replicate it and after that, I'd notice the patterns and colors. (I'm still trying to work out that handle in my mind. It's really cool and would love to interpret that in glass somehow.)
So when you're looking at an object, how do you view it? This eye opener afternoon has caused me to be aware of what I was seeing versus how another artist was seeing the same piece. I am now trying to view interesting art through a variety of "eyes". Tell me about you. What do you see, and how will you look at life a little differently?
